My father fondles me. I love it. Then his hands move where they don't belong. I look up startled into his eyes, but I'm only five. “I love you,” he whispers as he lays me in his bed. Love hurts.

Earlier memories flash before me, the tender touch of my mothers arms. She holds me with a cigarette in her mouth. She smiles. “Looks like me, doesn't she Tom.” He laughs, “sure does.” I love her.

A few months later, she holds me crying. “Momma's gotta go. Forgive me.” She puts me in my crib. “Love you doll.” She struggles to light a cigarette. After a few puffs, she walks to the door an says, “Goodbye.”

“Momma,” I sob, “Momma come.”

I cry till dad comes home and finds me alone. I never see Momma again. Love hurts.

Let me out of this cage. Let me out of this torment. Someone help me. I bang my fist against the cement walls till they bleed. I can't take the silence. I can't take the loneliness. If only someone would come and talk to me.

More memories... I'm holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in my mouth, wearing a skirt that barely covers my panties. It's a party at Kevin's, captain of the football team. The team is all around me. Suddenly, they are carrying me upstairs. I struggle to get free to no avail. They love on me till morning and leave me alone. I'm 16. I find my way home at dawn. My father awaits me at the door. “Where've you been whore!” He smacks me again and again, till I pass out. I awake in his bed beside him. He's crying. “You're my daughter. You're all I have. I love you.”

I shall die if I continue these memories. They hurt. Love hurts.

Now I remember Marsha. She reached out to me. She'd hold me in a special way. I knew it was wrong. She kissed my lips. I loved her. We became more then friends, inseparable. My father despised me because of her. He kicked me out his house at 18 years. I moved in with her. She was there for me. Things were getting better. Then, I came home to find her in bed with another girl. In anger I ran to my dresser, grabbed the gun and killed them both.

Still raging, I went to my father's house. When he answered the door, I shot him. I didn't mean it, the rage was totally in control of me. I watched him dying, knelt beside him on the floor and kissed his lips. “I love you Daddy, forgive me.”

I then jumped in my car and drove to Kevin's house, the place I'd been raped by the football team. I killed him and his brother. It was there I was finally caught by the police.

In prison, like a wild woman, I often attacked the guards and my prison-mates.

They've sentenced me to solitary confinement for life. I don't know where to turn. I'm lost. Make these memories stop. JESUS! JESUS! I call out His name again and again.

A neighbor once told me, Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

“What's His name.” I'd asked.

“Jesus,” she had replied.

I call on that name now with all I have within me.

Light! Peace. A strong and loving presence fills my cell. I know I'll never be the same again

Months pass.

The guards see the change in me. They give me a Bible at my request. I spend my days singing and studying my Bible. His love heals. It's so different from the other love I've experienced in life. His love brings joy instead of sorrow. I must share this.

She asked for crayons and paper too. Crayons? What was her plan? She had changed, yet, as a guard, I knew that prisoners often faked such changes. She wasn't allowed to have anything sharp, but we granted her crayons. The next few years she wrote and wrote. She'd study her Bible, sing and write.

Upon her death, I asked for the papers. I wanted to see what she'd written. The writings brought such joy to my soul. I gathered them together into manuscripts for a book series and named it, “We Granted Her Crayons.” For we granted her crayons and she blessed the world with her anointed writings.

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